SPCB Leadership

The Science Panel for the Congo Basin is led by three esteemed scientists from the region, that serves as inaugural Co-Chairs:

Bonaventure Sonké

University of Yaoundé I

  • Bonaventure Sonké is Professor of biodiversity of African rainforests and a plant taxonomist based at the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon. He is involved in project collaborations with many institutions: he is also a research associate of the Missouri Botanical Garden (USA), the University of Liège, and the Free University of Bruxelles in Belgium.He has been working on the dynamics of forest in Central Africa for more than 35 years during which he described more than 70 new species to science; he co-authored over 180 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and has written two books.

Lydie-Stella Koutika

Soil Care and Environmental Studies (SCES)

  • Lydie-Stella Koutika is a soil scientist, Director and Founder (Soil Care and Environmental Studies, SCES). She is an expert in land degradation processes, and researches solutions for the region’s food insecurity, as well as effective mitigation and adaptation to climate change through nature-based solutions i.e., forestry, agroforestry systems to benefit rural communities, mainly women. Dr Koutika also studies forest biodiversity conservation.

Corneille Ewango

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Special Envoy

Lee White

Honorary Professor at the University of Stirling

I am a joint British and Gabonese National. I was brought up in UK, Uganda and Sierra Leone and have lived most of my life in tropical Africa. In a 40-year career in Natural Resource Conservation and Management in Equatorial Africa I have worked in Gabon, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. During this time I served for 15 years as country director in Gabon and for a time as Central Africa Director for the international conservation NGO, Wildlife Conservation Society, WCS; Directed Gabon’s National Parks Agency, ANPN, for 10 years; and served for over 4 years as the Water, Forests, Sea and Environment Minister in the Gabonese Government from June 2019 onwards.

During my time at WCS, ANPN and the Ministry I participated in the creation of 53 new protected areas, including Gabon’s network of 13 national parks in 2002 and its 20 marine protected areas in 2017. I raised and managed over half a billion US$ of donor funding for conservation and forest management; lead the process to register 187 million tons of REDD+ results with the UNFCCC and structured a REDD+ results-based payment worth up to $150 million with the Norwegian Government, as part of the Central African Forest Initiative; helped to structure a debt restructuring Blue Bond for $500 million, designed to generate $163 million for marine conservation; and spoke on behalf of Africa at UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow.

I have authored / co-authored 120 scientific papers published in peer reviewed journals, written and / or edited 16 books and 30 book chapters and have 16,798 citations and an h-index of 62 on Google Scholar. I was awarded a CBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2010, for services to conservation in Central Africa and was made a ‘Chevalier' (2003) and then ‘Officier’ (2022) in Gabon’s National Order of Merit.